5 Ways To Harness The Power Of Urgency In Selling B2B Software
By Optimist
Every company is reliant on what other companies can provide them.
Each day when you get to work, think about the different companies involved in your activities. For example, if you sell online, you likely have an eCommerce integration making those sales happen.
Perhaps you used no-code software to create an application to make interacting with potential customers easier. Maybe your marketing team is hard at work creating graphics with the help of design software in which you invested.
No company exists in a bubble, which is why business-to-business (B2B) companies affect the work of so many other organizations.
But how do we decide which B2B business should be a part of our work?
According to Datanyze, over 43 percent of B2B software purchases happened due to an immediate need for the software’s services. Although a good sales call and long-term professional need rank highly as reasons why such purchases occur, urgency remains a significant factor in convincing a company your software is the one it needs.
How can you emphasize that urgency in your sales calls and cold pitches?
Address How Your Software Increases Productivity
We encounter opportunities to increase productivity each day. As the salesperson, it’s your job to point out these opportunities, which don’t have to be overly complicated. Think about all the time that gets spent in your inbox. The average person spends three hours reading, responding to, and organizing emails every day. That’s time employees could better spend elsewhere. But reducing email time isn’t always on a CEO or team leader’s radar.
If you’re selling an email client, which workers can use to read and manage their email, you must convey how this software solves an issue of a lack of productivity. The company you’re working to onboard needs to be made aware of where they’re falling short, and you need to convince them you have the solution.
There’s an urgency that comes from companies wasting productivity. CEOs and team leaders know time is money. But, thanks to your software, getting back time proves you can provide them with an immediately helpful service.
Compare Your Software To An Existing Service And Prove You Can Do It Better
The service you provide already likely exists.
You may not want to address this fact, but it’s crucial you do. Though there will always be a first-of-its-kind tech product, most companies do not fall into this category. For example, some companies may bill Flodesk as one of the best email marketing programs, but Flodesk can’t say that it’s the only email marketing platform out there. Other businesses may see Mailchimp or Klaviyo as better options.
You’ll find success when you actively recognize your competition. This recognition is especially important if you’re competing with a free service. Why would a business want to invest in a company when it can have what it does for free? It’s on you to outline why to make a compelling case.
Take, for instance, video meeting software. There’s plenty on the market, but Google Meet is free. However, Google Meet users can’t record on its free plan, video can be laggy, and chat content is immediately lost after the meeting ends.
If you’re selling video meeting software that competes with Google Meet, you should highlight how your platform has higher quality video, makes it easy to share files and notes, and allows recording. You may think it is unwise to bring up a competing service when trying to sell your product, but you may prove the company you’re selling to is in desperate need of an upgrade.
Demonstrate How Your Platform Amplifies Existing Solutions
Every company wants an all-in-one solution. But those are hard to find. Consider social media management.
What would a social media manager want? Most likely, it’s software where they could post, analyze metrics, and keep track of competitors across every social media channel.
Unfortunately, most social media management software does some or most of these things, but the majority don’t do them all. So, if a company invests in software that does most of them, that business’s social media manager may be trying to do additional work independently.
When selling what your company can provide a business, you should consider highlighting your integrations and addressing what additional needs your software can fulfill. Even businesses you believe are your competition may be complementary to your service if you fill a specific niche that it doesn’t. If a company is wasting its time trying to do work a product it previously invested in doesn’t do, they’re already in need of your service.
Personalize Your Product And Your Sales Pitch
In the world of B2C companies, we’ve seen visual configurators change how customers visualize the product they’re considering purchasing. By allowing buyers to make choices that help them see a product in action, these companies offer a more interactive and better buying experience. B2B companies can apply these lessons to their own sales process.
In the world of B2B software, salespeople need to address how their platform offers solutions to the current problems each company is facing. While many businesses may encounter similar issues that their industry deals with, you’ll find each business requires something different to address its problems.
When beginning a conversation with a potential buyer, develop a picture of these issues. Then, you can highlight how your product addresses them. Then, during a demo call, configure the platform so you can spend the call focused on the problems your product solves.
Stay Up To Date On Industry Trends
Although each company may have different issues it’s facing, industries often deal with similar problems. Staying current on these trends allows you to spend more time addressing the right issues with your potential buyers.
Consider that a large-scale hack occurred across businesses in the tech sector. Multiple companies saw their users’ data leaked, leading to a massive decline in trust and subscriber loss. Naturally, you’d want to stay on top of this news, especially if you’re selling something that may alleviate these concerns, such as software that increases online security.
When significant industry news breaks, you want to begin addressing it as soon as possible. As time goes on, the immediate concern these companies face diminishes. A company is more likely to purchase security software immediately after a massive hack than it would when it and the public have all but forgotten the hack.
Conclusion
Every business relies on the work of other companies to sustain it. You have to stand out to compete with other organizations offering similar services. To do that, you should tap into the power of urgency. Although some software sales happen due to a long-term professional need, the most significant reason these sales are closed is the salesperson proved the company had an immediate need.
But there’s a difference between hoping for an impulse buy and using urgency as a sales tactic. With urgency behind you, you can provide your potential buyer with resources demonstrating an immediate need. By keeping on top of your competitors’ capabilities and your potential buyer’s individual and industrywide problems, you provide solutions the buyer can’t ignore.